Societies, Scouts and Schoolbooks for the Arab Nation. A case study of Pan-Arabist Darwish al-Miqdadi (1897-1961)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Ulrike Freitag
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: from 2011 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 47611949

While nationalism (and pan-movements) is indisputably global, the underpinnings of its translatability elicrt no academic consensus. In locating these within the public sphere, this project critically engages with the print-media paradigm, shifting attention from circulating ideational contents onto other technologies of social communication. The exemplary commitment of Palestinian Pan-Arab Darwish al-Miqdadi (1897-1961) to voluntary associations, paramilitary organizations and pedagogical institutions begs the question of a quasi organic link between nationalism and the public sphere. His biography reveals how specific technologies are systematically singled out by individual agents in nationalistic pursuits. Micro-historical foci, for their part, help answer why scouting, schoolbooks and societies in particular were deemed conducive to Arab unity, even as they were embedded in, or framed by, the apparatuses of the colonial administration. Taken in conjunction, these three technologies not only map the global networks of an Arab nationalist in the making, but also show the transposability of sociopolitical forms of organization and protest at work. As both a civil servant of several future Arab nation-states and a global activist in the service of Arab nationalism, al-Miqdadi actually typifies a heretofore under-researched dimension of Arab nationalism: its linkage of clandestine and official societies, of militancy and bureaucracy. In effect, he thus exemplifies the ambivalent political subjectivity characteristic of Pan-movements actors.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 955: Agents of Cultural Globalisation, 1860-1930